


down to the black sea (come swimming with me)

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:30:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah and Rachel negotiate.





	down to the black sea (come swimming with me)

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: dubious consent]
> 
> I'm gay and this was inspired by [ this real real good Propunk art](http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/post/160355990619).

It seems like all of their meetings lately go like this: Rachel sitting on a couch, Sarah pacing in circles and trying not to look at her.

Well. They either go like that, or they end with Sarah’s broken bones.

She flexes her fingers surreptitiously as she walks around Rachel’s brand new bone-white office, just to feel the sparking of pain at the edge of her mind. Rachel broke her fingers. Rachel is sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, and she’s dressed in white – thin white lace top, white bra, white trousers. White like bones. Rachel is sitting on that couch, and no matter how hard Sarah tries she can’t break her at all.

“Sit down, Sarah,” Rachel says. Rachel’s voice is soft, now that she’s won. Pleasant, almost. When she says it the noose around Sarah’s neck yanks – that rope braided out of Kira, Cosima, Alison. They’re crushing her windpipe and she will not sit. Instead she walks to the window. Outside the world goes on, oblivious. If Rachel says _sit_ again Sarah won’t be able to keep using the noose metaphor; she’ll have to acknowledge that it’s a leash. She holds her breath. Rachel does not say _sit_.

“You won,” Sarah tells the window. “You’ve got everything you wanted. Me, Kira, the others, I don’t know why you dragged me here. You want to gloat? Eh?”

“I wanted to offer you the chance to negotiate,” Rachel says. Sarah doesn’t want to turn around, so she watches Rachel’s reflection in the glass instead. She can see why Rachel does this all the time; things are so much easier when people don’t have to be people. When they aren’t real, you must be able to hurt them as much as you want.

“Negotiate,” Sarah says flatly. She watches Rachel in the glass, small and two-dimensional and emotionless. “Doesn’t that mean I have to have something you want.”

“You still have things I want,” says Rachel, in that same soft voice. That does it: Sarah turns around. She crosses the space between them, she stands over Rachel. She watches Rachel’s pupils bloom like ink in cold water.

“You want me to beg,” Sarah says.

Rachel tilts her head to the side. “Is that what I want?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Sarah snaps. “Is it?”

Rachel slowly uncrosses her legs. “It seems like you know better than I do,” she says, once both of her feet are on the floor. Sarah watches Rachel’s hands. It would only take one broken finger to satisfy Sarah, just one; she only wants Rachel to know that she’s an object that can be broken. It seems like Sarah should have taught her this lesson already. Her mistake for aiming for Rachel’s soft parts instead of for her bones, probably.

Sarah exhales through her nose and takes a few steps back. “I’m not going to beg,” she says warily, even though a voice in the back of her head is whispering: _consider it, for them, think about it, for them_. “You can stop thinking that, I won’t.”

“Really?” Rachel says. “If I’d undo everything, if I’d let you and your… _sisters_ live their lives – and that was all I asked from you in return? Would your answer remain unchanged?”

Sarah swallows. She watches Rachel’s mouth, but no matter how long she looks Rachel doesn’t smirk. She just watches Sarah, patient and inscrutable.

“Please,” Sarah says, and hates herself the moment it’s out of her mouth. Rachel won’t even do her the rock-bottom kindness of talking again – she sits in silence, so they both have to listen to the sad limp echoes of that _please_ hang in the air forever and ever.

“No, you’re right,” Rachel says thoughtfully. “That wasn’t what I wanted.”

Anger shocks its way through Sarah so fast that she actually shudders; she turns on her heel and paces away, back across the office. She reaches out an arm and swipes everything off of Rachel’s desk, sends it crashing to the floor.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, with the sort of frustrated disappointment Sarah is used to getting from elementary school teachers and failed foster parents.

“ _Rachel_ ,” she says, and kicks a pretentious statuette. It skids a few inches and then stops. Sarah’s toes hurt. She wants to hurt Rachel she wants to _hurt Rachel_ but Rachel won’t stand up, won’t get angry, she just – keeps – _sitting there_ —

“You’re not helping yourself,” Rachel says. Sarah paces back across the room, fast furious steps, and is back over Rachel. She pins her arms to the couch on either side of Rachel and resists, barely, the urge to bare her teeth and snarl.

“Yeah, ‘cause you are?” she says – and it’s still a snarl, she didn’t manage to keep it in. “Want me to negotiate, won’t even tell me your bloody _rules_ —”

Rachel exhales through her nose, one small fraction of the anger Sarah can feel screaming through her muscles, and Rachel fists her hand in the collar of Sarah’s top, pulls her forward, and kisses her.

Sarah, off-balance, falls into Rachel’s lap. Rachel kisses like it’s a set of instructions that she has already repeated three or four times, her mouth persistent against Sarah’s, her hand still too close to being around Sarah’s neck. Sarah just sits there. Her mind is blank and bewildered – Rachel is kissing her. What the hell.

Wait. Rachel is _kissing her_. Her brain catches onto the thought and the gears start spinning, the machine begins to operate. She’s about to start kissing back when Rachel breaks the kiss, glares at her with something that – no, no, it’s not frustration. It’s frustration but it’s over something else and – _oh_. Rachel is _desperate_.

“ _Really_ ,” Sarah says.

“You wanted to know the rules,” Rachel says. “There they a—” but Sarah has already started kissing her again. She slides her tongue into Rachel’s mouth, opens Rachel up, hums against Rachel’s lips. It should be strange – kissing her clone – but really it’s not. It’s just another thing Sarah never thought she’d do, and now she’s doing it. And it feels good. Rachel tugs Sarah’s lip between her teeth, and it feels good. The spark-skid of Rachel’s fingernails along Sarah’s ribs. Rachel’s mouth wet and desperate against Sarah’s. It all feels good.

Sarah breaks the kiss to put her mouth against Rachel’s neck, feel the way Rachel’s pulse is hammering against her lips. She bites down.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Rachel says, and Sarah opens her mouth again. She has Rachel’s jugular between her teeth – just the points of her teeth, this close to Rachel’s skin. She sits there and breathes. Before Rachel she wouldn’t have even imagined it, how good it would feel right now to sink her teeth in and rip Rachel’s throat out. But Rachel put that leash around Sarah’s neck, so here Sarah is: an animal on the edge of release. She can’t move. She wants it, so much, she wants Rachel’s blood on her tongue.

“Sarah,” Rachel says; her hand fists in Sarah’s hair, pulls. Not hard. If she was vicious Sarah could be vicious back, could claw and bite and growl. But Rachel won’t be vicious, and Sarah is negotiating. She shudders out a sigh against Rachel’s neck and keeps kissing her way down. She doesn’t even know how to get Rachel’s top off so she doesn’t try it; the lace is thin enough that she can feel Rachel’s skin under her mouth anyways. It’s warm. Sarah imagines that her own mouth is burning hot, that she’s leaving burn marks on Rachel as she goes. She imagines Rachel is made of paper and that Sarah is burning her alive. She drops to her knees on the ground.

When she looks up she sees Rachel looking down at her, her face shining, her face the very worst thing. Sarah looks down before she can look too long, but her brain unravels the emotions anyways – joy, vulnerability, arousal, spite, love. This must be everything, for Rachel. Sitting here in her office at the top of the world, Sarah on her knees in front of her. She must think she owns Sarah, now, completely.

But that’s wrong, isn’t it. Sarah owns Rachel. She has Rachel in her hands, and she can take her completely apart.

She holds the word _Rachel_ in her mouth until it is exactly the way she wants it: soft, sweet, sighing. Then she lets it out. Then she does it, because she can, because it’s easy: she adds “Please.”

Rachel’s hands dig into the couch on either side of her. That’s answer enough. Sarah undoes Rachel’s pants, pulls them and her underwear down. She leans in and she buries her face between Rachel’s legs. It’s easy. She knows just what they like: how to go just slow enough to tease, when to press her tongue up against Rachel’s clit. Every time she can feel Rachel’s muscles tensing, hear her breathing starting to hitch, Sarah slows down. Fury warms her belly and thuds with her pulse between her legs. She could slip her hand into her underwear and get off to it right now, if she wanted to: how much Rachel wants to come, how much Sarah is not going to let her.

“Sarah,” Rachel says again, tugging at Sarah’s hair, tugging at that same old invisible leash. Sarah hums a questioning response, lets the vibrations of the humming send Rachel whining above her. She traces the tip of her tongue against Rachel’s clit and Rachel whines again, louder, a desperate sound that she couldn’t have intended to make. It’s almost satisfying; it’s not satisfying enough.

Rachel’s hips are tilting forward – she could fall off the couch now, if Sarah let her. She could do all sorts of things, if Sarah let her. Sarah doesn’t let her. Sarah leans back, licks Rachel off her lips. They’re both breathing a little too heavy, although ( _good_ ) Rachel is having a harder time. “What are you doing,” Rachel gasps.

“Negotiating,” Sarah says, without inflection.

“You _were_ ,” Rachel says, visibly settling back into herself. “What you’re doing _now_ is something else entirely.”

“You want this,” Sarah says, shaping her voice into the kind of animal Rachel wants: quiet, dangerous. “You want me here on my knees with my face between your legs. You love it.

“And I,” she says, “want my family to go free.” She leaves herself out of it, carefully, that space that Rachel can fill however she wants.

“I’ll consider it,” Rachel says, eyes sparking dangerous. Too sharp, jagged edges; you break a bone and the edges of it can cut you. Sarah exhales through her nose and leans back in. She does it all right, this time: she brings Rachel right to the edge of orgasm and then carries her over, Rachel’s hands fisted in her hair, Rachel letting out a long groan. Sarah leans back. She doesn’t lick her lips off again, just settles back on her haunches and considers the mess of Rachel she’s left behind. Rachel’s mouth gapes. Rachel’s eyelashes flutter.

Rachel leans forward and swipes her thumb along Sarah’s lip, and it comes back shining. “Get the phone,” she says, voice rough.

Sarah stands up. Her legs are still shaking, and – god help her – she doesn’t want anything more than to lean back against Rachel’s desk and grind against her hand until she comes. Instead she wobbles over to the debris by the desk. The phone is lying on the floor, knocked out of its cradle but not broken. She picks it up. When she turns back around Rachel has pulled her trousers back up, refastened them. She is, really, a terrible liar: she still looks so _fucked_. Sarah passes her the phone wordlessly.

“Martin,” Rachel says, voice sounding admirably controlled over the phone. Sarah folds her arms across her chest, sways from side to side. “Send word that Alison Hendrix is free to go, please.” She hangs up, holds the phone out again. Sarah doesn’t take it.

“That wasn’t the deal,” she says.

“I wasn’t aware of any deal,” Rachel says. She tilts her head to the side. “I was under the impression we were both helping each other get what we want.”

Sarah’s very first instinct is to drop down to her knees again, the thud of her kneecaps jarring on this white floor, and do this whole thing a second time. Cosima, next time. Then Kira. Rachel will never let Sarah go – they both understand that, don’t they.

But it’s too late: Rachel has stood up, has made her way over to the door and has it opened. Outside the guards watch the both of them, inscrutable. “Take her,” Rachel says. Sarah’s muscles tense up, on instinct, but what can she do? Even if she beats both of these guards, what can she _do?_

She lets them take her away. She watches Rachel the whole time, jaw set.

“I’ll see you soon, Sarah,” Rachel says, and Sarah keeps her eyes on Rachel’s smeared lipstick until she’s out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> You rise, I fall, I stand, you crawl  
> You twist, I turn, who's the first to burn  
> You sit and stay, I don't obey  
> Where do we land in the black sea?
> 
> Grip your hands -- I'm tired, what's your worth  
> Watch yourself beg hanging on to earth  
> Love, war, pain, life everything's the same to me  
> So come down to the black sea swimming with me ah-ooh  
> \--"Black Sea," Natasha Blume
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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